A healthy and delicious alternative to sweet potato casserole. A sweet potato and apple bake with fresh cranberries is tart, sweet, and the dish you need for the holidays!
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This Sweet Potato and Apple Bake with fresh cranberries is a thing of beauty. I think it screams everything fall and is a beautiful dish to present. Let me tell you a story of how this very dish came to be; it would be so rude of me if I were to take all of the credit for this amazing creation!
The Story
I love love love Thanksgiving time! Back when I was a freshman in college, I had a dear roommate that took me home with her and her sister for Thanksgiving so I could spend the holiday with their family. Her family was so gracious to me and I felt like I was at home during that little break. Their extended family came and they all had this amazing dinner ready. My roommate’s mom made this amazing sweet potato dish and I fell in love with it! I had always had the classic brown sugar and marshmallow dish (which is amazing in and of itself!) but her twist was equally as delicious! Her dish had apples in it instead and I loved loved loved this dish so much!
A few years ago, after my husband and I got married, I was asked to bring a sweet potato dish to my in-laws for dinner but it needed to be a somewhat healthy dish because some people were watching their diets. At first, I thought, well dang, nobody likes sweet potatoes and they don’t want the brown sugar and marshmallow dish. But then I thought back on this amazing dish that my roommate’s mom made a few years back and knew what I would bring.
She was, of course, very flattered that I asked for her recipe and found that it was super simple. The dish I share with you now is a variation of this very dish. You can think of it as slightly like a half and half apple/ sweet potato pie.
I love this dish because it really is a healthier alternative to the brown sugar dish because it has an only ½ cup of sugar in the whole thing!!! That’s it! And the fresh cranberries really give a nice tartness to the whole dish and bring a nice pop of color to the whole thing. I love this dish and I know you all will to!
Make this as part of your Thanksgiving meal and let me know how everyone loved it!
Happy eating!
For other great holiday recipes, check out these:
How to Roast a Perfectly Moist Turkey Breast
Green Bean Casserole From Scratch {Deconstructed}
Chocolate Cream Pie with Graham Cracker Crust
- 3 pounds sweet potato peeled and sliced 1/4" half moons
- 2 pounds Granny Smith apples cored and sliced 1/4" thick
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 ounce corn starch
- 1 pound fresh cranberries
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into half moons. ¼ inch thick. Core and slice apples ¼ inch thick.
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Mix together dry ingredients and, in a large bowl, toss potatoes and apples with the dry ingredients. Add cranberries as well.
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Spray a 9x13 baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Pour potatoes and apples into pan, cover with tin foil. Bake at 350 for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
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Remove tin foil and serve.
Oooo … cranberries in recipes is one of my favorite things ever!